Another View: Wave white flag on this maritime law

The Jones Act, enacted in 1920 to promote the nation’s merchant marine, is putting American lives in danger as roadways across New Jersey and other states turn to ice rinks.

Orange County (Calif.) Register

This appeared Feb. 21 in the Orange County (Calif.) Register:

New Jersey officials recently referred to the state’s road salt stockpile, used for deicing roadways during this brutal winter, as “desperately” low. But it was only until temperatures began to heat up along the East Coast that ships loaded with 40,000 tons of salt were finally expected to start reaching the Garden State (last) week.

The shipment, delayed since last week when areas of New Jersey were expecting up to 14 inches of snow, wasn’t traveling from some far-off port of call. It was stuck in Maine, but not due to inclement weather but, rather, government regulation.

The problem was simple: The nearest available ship flew the flag of the Marshall Islands, which flew in the face of an archaic and protectionist law from the 1920s that requires ships moving goods between American ports to be U.S.-registered and flying the American flag.

That law, the Jones Act, enacted in 1920 to promote the nation’s merchant marine, was putting American lives in danger as roadways across New Jersey turned to ice rinks. The state pleaded with federal regulators to waive the requirement, but the Department of Homeland Security refused a waiver.

In all, the salt debacle highlights the precarious, and in this case dangerous, situation that regulators take when they seek to infringe on the rights of free trade.

The state has had difficulty finding a carrier that meets the standards of the federal government’s burdensome bureaucracy on shipping along our coasts.

Officials finally contracted with a smaller American flagged vessel to move some 9,500 tons of salt, but due to the weather, the barge had to take shelter in a Rhode Island port.

State officials expected the barge to reach New Jersey shores by early this week, as another possible snowstorm is believed to be on its way and it is unlikely that the first shipment will be enough to refill New Jersey’s depleted salt stocks. A needless debacle has become a race against the weather over mindless bureaucracy padded by archaic law.

Federal regulators should shrug off 94 years of bad law and grant New Jersey’s waiver before the next winter storms hit the Mid-Atlantic. Because without a regular road salt deicing, New Jersey roadways, like the Garden State Parkway, stand to live up to their name and become a parking lot for abandoned cars the likes of which we have already seen in North Carolina and Georgia during this particularly frigid winter.

Further, now that the inefficiencies of the Jones Act have been highlighted, Congress and federal regulators should move quickly to simply scrap the law, built upon the poor philosophy of protectionism, along with any archaic, protectionist law that seeks to deter the free flow of goods to the detriment of the American people.